View full sizeOver 200 skateboarders convened on the DIY skate park made from the tennis courts of the abandon and forgotten Brewster-Douglass projects in Detroit for "Go Skateboard Day," a global event to get skaters out together to skate, June 21. (Tanya Moutzalias | MLive.com)

DETROIT, MI - A shell-shocked looking Detroit cop who had to be in his 60s tried Friday night to break it all up at the abandoned Brewster-Douglass housing projects.

The cop told Inner City Skateboards co-founders Darnell Turner-Stroud and Delon Robinson that the more than 200 skateboarders at the projects were trespassing.

"Who's in charge?" the cop asked sharply, as he scanned the crowd. "You can't be here; this is city property and you need a permit to do something like this."

Turner-Stroud and Robinson explained, respectfully, that nobody was "in charge" because it was a word-of-mouth and social-media based effort to celebrate national Go Skateboarding Day.

The cop stared at the crowd, paced back and forth a bit, and eventually left as the party continued and showed that Detroit not only supports the extreme sports holiday, but most importantly an ongoing effort to win a three-year bid to host ESPN's X Games.

View full sizeOver 200 skateboarders convened on the DIY skate park made from the tennis courts of the abandon and forgotten Brewster-Douglass projects in Detroit for "Go Skateboard Day," a global event to get skaters out together to skate, June 21. The skateboarders then took over the streets of downtown Detroit from around Comerica Park during a Detroit Tigers Game, to Hart Plaza and up to Capitol Park. (Tanya Moutzalias | MLive.com)

"Huge," said Turner-Stroud, who founded Inner City Skateboards with his friend three years ago. "Getting the X Games would be absolutely huge!"

"Not only for the local skateboarding community," added Robinson, who helped sell 10 of the company's homemade skate decks at the event. "But three years of the X Games would be huge for the city of Detroit as a whole!"

This wasn't your average day in Detroit - even at the Brewster-Douglass housing projects, a place notorious for strange happenings.

In an area that's slated for demolition by the city of Detroit sometime this year, once a home to Motown legend Diana Ross, packs of ambitious skaters embraced it as their risk-taking experimental outdoor lab.

Lifelong Detroit resident Quintin Stroud, Turner-Stroud's uncle, couldn't help but be a little emotional at the scene as he sold burgers and soft drinks at a grill near rundown tennis courts used as a skating stunt area.

Stroud lives on the city's west side, at Davison and Ewald, and remembers the days when "The Brewsters" were at capacity and full of life before a series of closures in the 90s eventually shut the place completely down.

Go Skateboarding Day at abandoned Brewster-Douglass housing projectsOver 200 skateboarders convened on the DIY skate park made from the tennis courts of the abandon and forgotten Brewster-Douglass projects in Detroit for "Go Skateboard Day," a global event to get skaters out together to skate, June 21. The skateboarders then took over the streets of downtown Detroit from around Comerica Park during a Detroit Tigers Game, to Hart Plaza and up to Capitol Park. (Tanya Moutzalias | MLive.com)

"Seeing all this makes me feel warm and fuzzy," said Stroud, while admiring a skater's attempt to fly off a homemade jump about 15 feet away. "Seeing these people - all different kinds of people - makes it almost seem like this area is normal again.

"I remember when The Brewsters were always a booming place."

The Go Skateboarding Day party was just the pregame warm-up to a free show from hard-partying rocker Andrew W.K., an Ann Arbor native, at the Majestic Theatre that night.

This effort to bring people together with extreme sports, music and Stroud's barbecue definitely made an impact on suburbanites, too.

Alex Alvarez, 26, is a Wayne State student in a masters program for urban planning who couldn't think of a better way to show ESPN how hungry Detroit is to host the X Games for three years.

The bid, if won, would give the Motor City the event from 2014-16; Detroit is one of four finalists along with Chicago, Austin, Texas and Charlotte, N.C.

View full sizeOver 200 skateboarders convened on the DIY skate park made from the tennis courts of the abandon and forgotten Brewster-Douglass projects in Detroit for "Go Skateboard Day," a global event to get skaters out together to skate, June 21. (Tanya Moutzalias | MLive.com)

"Something like this, with all these skateboarders at an abandoned housing project, is definitely encouraging for the bid," said Alvarez, who lives in Grosse Pointe Park. "And it shows there's definitely more productive ways to make use of open spaces in Detroit."

Organizers behind the X Games 2 Detroit effort (#XG2D on Twitter) and other volunteers mowed parcels of land on the Brewster-Douglass housing projects site earlier in the week to prepare for Friday's party.

There were at least 100 skateboarders by 3 p.m., a food truck and even a truck sponsored by Red Bull that appeared to do some promotional activities.

Peter Kirchmaier, 25, also of Grosse Pointe Park, was impressed how quickly the Go Skateboard Day party came together and is hopeful Detroit will get the recognition from ESPN he believes it deserves and has earned.

"How cool is this?," Kirchmaier exclaimed. "You're actually making use of a neglected space like this. Just think what having the X Games would be like."

What do you think about the X Games 2 Detroit effort and the Go Skateboarding Day party at the Brewster-Douglass housing projects? Were you there?